At the risk of sounding ancient, I'll say, "I remember
when ..." I remember life before cell phones, the Internet, and
remote controlled TVs. And I remember the birth of the Air and Space
Expeditionary Force, commonly known as the AEF. However, just as
electronics evolved over the years, so has the AEF. Thank goodness. So
what's next for the AEF? Does it need to continue to evolve? And
what's in store for us combat comptrollers?

The AEF is how the Air Force (AF) organizes, train and equips
itself to meet national security objective. It is how we generate our
forces, as well as how we present them to the combatant commanders,
enabling home station units to reconstitute so the capability can be
provided on a sustained basis. The AEF gives our Airmen predictability,
to know when they can expect to deploy and for how long. For a very
short time, the AEF was designed to support three-month deployments, and
was quickly update to four months. At the time, this caused quite a stir
as this generation had never been expected to deploy for that length of
time. The AF typically is called upon to get in, do the job, and return
home. Fortunately, the limited war contingence operations required of
the AF for so long afforded us this mentality. That is, until September
11, 2001 changed all of our worlds.

This long war against terrorism drove the change to six-month
deployments, and demanded numerous tours for 12 months. Our robust
presence in Iraq and Afghanistan drove us to staff forward, joint
headquarters, requiring FM to learn other services' financial
processes and systems. Congress authorized new and unique funding
authorities to build other nations' military capabilities, further
increasing the demand for financial managers in the area of
responsibility (AOR).

The AF ended up bearing the brunt of many joint, financial
management taskings in large part because we own the competitive
advantage. We develop and train Airmen in their specialty immediately.
The Army typically gets into a specialty after years of training to
become a soldier first. The Navy is split between shore and sea duties.
Financial management (FM) on shore is largely accomplished by civilians.
FM at sea is performed by military, but the duties are combined with
other logistics and supply duties. To top it off, we're dang good
at what we do. We've proven our capability and worth in a deployed,
joint environment for the past decade. AF financial managers are in high
demand.

The challenge of meeting the numerous demands for AF capabilities
drove the need for the next generation of the AEF--AEF Next. If there is
one thing the AF learned from this war, it's the need to speak
"joint"--to translate our AF lingo into terms our sister
services and the Joint Staff can understand. AF leadership recognized
our need to improve the translation and presentation of our AF
capabilities to the combatant commanders. Since we have unique
capabilities, this is no easy task. No other service launches combat
operations from home station. We support global operations for the
combatant commands daily, but these personnel and assets are not
captured as "deployed" in a traditional sense. We deploy unit
type codes (UTCs) versus units. The former Chief of Staff of the Air
Force, General Norton Schwarz, directed a new AEF model to better
represent the full capabilities the AF provides to the combatant
commanders on a daily basis--to capture and represent what the AF has
available, committed, and in reconstitution in a definable and
quantifiable unit of measurement. He recognized that it must be easily
understood by the public, Congress, Joint/ Interagency communities, AF
senior leaders, and Airmen. The original AEF Next model presented our AF
capabilities in six types of Airpower Teams (APTs), which align to AF
core functions and doctrine--Strike, Mobility, Space & Cyberspace,
C2ISR, Special Operations, and Agile Combat Support. The intent is not
to change the wing structure, but to capture them within teams using a
team approach. While the AEF Next concept is approved and on target for
FY15 full operational capability (FOC), the unit of measurement and
force presentation model is still under development.

What does this mean for FM?

As part of Agile Combat Support, in AEF Next, FM will be postured
at 1:2 deploy-to-dwell (DTD). Current FM officers' deploy-to-dwell
is 1:2 (tempo band D) and enlisted is 1:4 (tempo band B) with the
vulnerability windows remaining at six months. The key difference
between the AEF Next execution model and current AEF tempo bands is that
the supply (personnel) and demand (deployment taskings) will not drive
the posture. Instead, it represents our maximum capacity. Tempo bands
will be a thing of the past, but 1:2 DTD will be the norm. Being ready
and available to deploy every 12 months (1:2 DTD), in your vulnerability
window, does not necessarily equate to everyone being tasked to deploy.
The contingency operation will continue to define the need.

While much remains the same, AEF Next will account for all forces
committed to the combatant commanders. The AF will deploy as teams of
some sort, something more similar to the units of our sister services
than individual UTCs spread across the total force. This will help
synchronize deployments and assignments for each wing and unit. This
might lead to an adjustment of our FM UTCs back to teams versus
individual UTCs. With the teaming concept, commanders will be more
involved at home and deployed as they will have stakeholder interest in
the team's success. The idea is simple, "Train like we fight,
fight like we train."

Taken from lessons learned from OEF/OIF/OND, AEF Next is the next
evolution of the AEF, designed to fully represent the AF's
capabilities provided to the combatant commanders. Though there is still
much to be determined and refined, we can press ahead knowing our combat
comptrollers are well tested and ready to adjust to this new construct.
Stay tuned for more information via AEF Online at
https://aef.afpc.randolph.af.mil/education.aspx or the Combat
Comptroller Community of Practice at
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/combatcomptroller.asp.

Author Lt Col Wendy Miller is the Chief of FM War Plans, Office of
the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and
Comptroller. She previously served as Commander, 36th Comptroller
Squadron, at Andersen AFB, Guam.

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